Recruiting, requesting and donating

[Outremer]

I have the advantage of having a tenured professor's help   He's digging up some information on armoured mounts during the late 12th century. 

We have a tremendous collection of swords to go by, at least with this subject we have a lot of information.  The various armories in Italy, Alexandria, Baghdad, etc, have provided us with a wealth of information, in addition to those excavated within a C-14 dated context.   I'm not trying to be an annoyance, I'm simply pointing out that the sword shown in the first pic didn't exist at the time.  Even if you stick to type XI and XIa swords, there is an enormous number of actual swords to base them on, and they show a lot of diversity.  Sir William Marshall's sword, for example, was of this type.  There aren't only a handful of swords from this period, there are thousands.

On the issue of cloth-draped horses, I'm thinking you're right.  At least according to Osprey (generally very reliable...I have 200 of their books, all of them scanned, in case anyone is interested)  I found such a representation of Wolfram von Eschenabch:



Osprey also shows the French @ 1215 with a similar setup, but I wouldn't want to assume anything newer than that was in use in 1187. There were a lot of developments in the years surrounding 1215 with the First Barons War:



But I think this is an accurate representation of a cavalry mass at the Horns of Hattin and the later battles of the Third Crusade:



Notice the one horse is protected only with a Gambeon, not chainmail, and it isn't even cloth covered.

[Ron Losey]

Yeah, well, not all the horses were covered.  Mostly just the mounts of knights showing off their coat of arms.  That's about what we have.  However, even the best-known researchers about this period pretty much all said that horse armor was transitional in this time - some was appearing, in limited quantity, but exactly how much is quite a mystery.  The decorative cloth used to protect the horses from the desert sun was sometimes reinforced with quilted cloth, leather, or various bits of metal, but exactly how much was anybody's guess.  (One dig from the period found one section of maille for a horse - at least they thought it was for a horse, from what was left of it - but the same dig also found a mule that, from the stuff around it, appeared to have been used as a combat mount as well... you win some, you lose some.  That was a pretty recent find.)

And I don't trust carbon dating as far as I can throw it.  Not since that UCLA lab tested a live sealion and it said the thing had been dead for 6000 years.  (Due to diet and effects of salt water, sea mammals have a MUCH lower C14 level than the human fingernail clippings they used to calibrate the machine.)  Calibrating those things to get a useful number is almost impossible, unless you have one item with a date stamped on it and can confirm that a huge number of factors were completely unchanged between the two years.  And since you don't know what the second year is, that's hard to do unless the items come out the same date.  Otherwise, even getting close can be tricky.  You don't have to be much of a physicist to see what's wrong with the theory... it assumes a bunch of unknowns that, were they known, could have a HUGE impact on the result.  Don't trust Carbon-14 dates... if they get you within 500 years, you're lucky.  (Sometimes they're incredibly accurate, and that throws you off even more when they give you a result that doesn't figure.)

Raz built, or borrowed, the swords ... I'm not sure exactly which sword you're talking about.  The only ones added specifically for this mod were the Muslim blades, all the others were stuff floating around for the M&B community.  They weren't sorted all that carefully - if they looked anywhere close to period, we sort of figured one of them might have been there, and threw it in.  There are some obviously Norse weapons there too, which would be out-of-date by the period, unless somebody just liked the older style or was using their great-great-grandfather's sword (possible - Japan wasn't the only place to consider swords as family heirlooms)... but what the heck, it's a game not a doctoral thesis.  A few corners have been cut, here and there, at least until somebody gets around to doing all new sword models specifically for HW.  On that note, we're also waiting for pigs to learn to fly.

Consider that Raz is making at least 90% of this mod himself, and so he's cut a few corners.  I try to help, but my only real expertise is in killing things ... of which I know a good deal, but I can only model damage for the blades I can see.

Osprey's books are moderately reliable, at least close enough to base a computer game from.  They're not always real specific or entirely clear what they mean, but again, for a game we can likely extrapolate the missing bits and be close enough.

Anyway, yeah, the social questions were tough ones.  If it was easy, anybody could handle it.

[Merlkir]

As I've pointed out earlier in this very thread on the topic of horse covers, the oldest depiction we have is from Petr de Ebulo's manuscript and it's from very late 12th century...

[Outremer]

Carbon dating is very accurate provided its properly calibrated, which is usually done with dendrochronology (very reliable).

EDIT: Merlkir, it seems you posted at the same time as I.  The problem with that depiction is that it shows jousting in a tournament.  All the bells and whistles came out when a tournament was on, the question is whether they bothered in actual warfare.  With so few examples, I guess its historically valid to argue either point.

[Merlkir]

Carbon dating is very accurate provided its properly calibrated, which is usually done with dendrochronology (very reliable).

EDIT: Merlkir, it seems you posted at the same time as I.  The problem with that depiction is that it shows jousting in a tournament.  All the bells and whistles came out when a tournament was on, the question is whether they bothered in actual warfare.  With so few examples, I guess its historically valid to argue either point.

exactly I thought the post implied this itself. Just pointing out that the covers existed in one or other way at that time.

edit: concerning the actual use in combat, my opinion is that it depends on the person. Some might have felt the need to be known and recognized in battle, some might have gone for practical equipment..

[Ron Losey]

In the case of horse barding, there are several conflicting viewpoints and little or no evidence.

We know armored horse were used in antiquity.  Their lack of use for several centuries in Europe and parts of the Middle East seems to be the exception rather than the rule.  It would be foolish to think that they were unaware of the concept ... if they did not use armored horse, it was for reasons of convenience, not technology.

Decorative tabbards on both people and horses would have seen use in parades and tournaments, or by anybody who was advertising his identity or affiliation.  This is a very different issue from either combat armor or blankets to protect from weather (although both would likely be decorated), which are themselves rather different (although overlapping) issues as well.  Heavy padding to protect from the desert sun would have some limited armor value, considerably more if somebody decided to lace a little hardened leather or a few strips of metal into it (which might have been done just to reduce wear or maintain dead air space between the cloth and the animal).  This would not exactly be "armor", but it would increase the durability of the horse considerably.  True combat armor for horses ... well, there's just a lack of evidence there.  A couple of fragments from digs around the period, which might or might not have been for a horse, and little useful art to prove the point one way or the other.  Maille for horses did appear in considerable volume not too much later than this, seriously suggesting that somebody had thought of that before ... but again the reasons why it was not really in use for several centuries is also a mystery.

Tragically, it's one of those questions that will probably not be answered solidly.  We'll probably end up retaining our current compromise, where low armor values (already used to represent the toughness of particular horses) would be slightly increased by weather-related coverings, and that true armored horse would be extremely rare (and then no heavier than light maille).

I already figured out how to lower the horses' stats to account for the extra weight, at least enough to encourage many people to go with less heavily armored mounts.

But those social questions were more pressing.  We can fake the horse-armor thing (with the above compromise), and make it seem convincing.  Faking proper titles and such is a lot harder.

[llamalad]

Hi I'm new at this, but I'm interested in modeling and the crusades,  so if anyone on the dev team can find a use for me, I'd be happy to help out. Unfortunately, I'm not great at texturing though. I don't know if this'll mean anything, but I work on 3dsmax 9. Here's one of my work pieces, a sword I made during my free time.

[llamalad]

Oops, I can't figure out how to put on a picture. If someone could tell me, I could show the sword and maybe some more once I finish it up.

[Ron Losey]

Oops, I can't figure out how to put on a picture. If someone could tell me, I could show the sword and maybe some more once I finish it up.

You have to post them on some image-hosting site.  It's a mess.


I can't speak officially, but at last check, what the mod needed was somebody to do a hundred LOD's of everything already in the mod.  If you're game for that, I'm pretty sure the job is yours.  (This mod is based around HUGE battles, so good ultra-low-poly stuff for higher LOD's is a must... boring work, just retexturing and resizing one triangle over and over.)

Raz has been busy ... he's usually a little slow to respond at the moment, but he will get back to you.

[llamalad]

Okay then. If you have any ideas of image-hosting sites, could you suggest them please? I'm new to this whole thing, and still in high school, but if you can find me something to do, just say the word and get on it. I normally deal especially well with boring work, being halfway through an algebra course

[Ron Losey]

Just talked to Raz on it ... he's putting things on hold until M&B 1.0 (expected in a couple of months or so).

So stand by.

[llamalad]

Okay, thanks a lot. I'll watch the boards.

[broodwarcd]

Just talked to Raz on it ... he's putting things on hold until M&B 1.0 (expected in a couple of months or so).

So stand by.

...part of me knew that ...o-well ...another couple of months and summer will be in clear view...thanks for the update Ron. You just saved me alot of trips to the computer checking if its been released yet lol.

BTW...i can see my front lawn...don't ya love spring

[War_B*stard]

Just talked to Raz on it ... he's putting things on hold until M&B 1.0 (expected in a couple of months or so).
So stand by.

Seems like the smart thing to do. I guess this way he doesn't need to spend time porting HW to small updates of M&B. I've no idea what porting involves, but I imagine it's probably a bit of a headache.